A portable intelligent device (“PID”), also known as a Personal Digital Assistant (“PDA”), allows a person to carry and access a wide variety of data, such as address and phone data, date book and scheduling information, expense data, e-mail messages, memoranda, to-do lists, etc. An example of such a PID is the Palm V Organizer from 3Com Corporation. The Palm V includes a serial port that allows the Palm V to be coupled to a personal computer to import and export data. The Palm V also includes an infrared (“IR”) port that the allows the Palm V to transmit data to and receive data from other devices having an IR port, such as another Palm V.
Public “pay phones” and cellular communication technology (e.g., cellular phones) allow a person to easily initiate an interactive voice communication (e.g., a voice phone call) with another person. It has been more difficult for a person who is located away from home or office to easily receive calls unless various non-systematic, ad-hoc mechanisms are used to notify the person's friends, family, and work colleagues of the address (e.g., phone number) of a nearby multimedia terminal (e.g., telephone).
Typical public pay phones do not adequately allow a person who is located away from home or office to easily receive calls because a caller to that person cannot know in advance the phone number of a public phone to which the mobile person is in close proximity at any given time. Cellular phone technology does allow a cellular phone subscriber to always have a known phone number, but current battery technology deters a cellular phone subscriber from leaving a cellular phone constantly on to receive an incoming call. Moreover, the typical higher price of cellular communication dampens the willingness of a cellular phone subscriber to blithely advertise and accept any and all incoming phone calls.
The obstacles restricting a person's ability to receive incoming communications are exacerbated with the increase in types of communications media. Even if cellular phone technology overcomes the obstacles noted above, it will still not be easy for a mobile person to receive a paper fax from a cellular phone or participate in a video conference. This difficulty includes the expense and physical bulk of multimedia receivers and transmitters (e.g., a fax machine, a video camera) and the large bandwidth requirements of multimedia communications (e.g., a video phone call) that cannot be met practically in the wireless electromagnetic spectrum.
The present invention in one embodiment advantageously allows a mobile person to be the recipient of incoming multimedia calls by utilizing recent technological advances, such as the increasing ubiquity of standard data networking technology based on packet-switched Internet Protocol (“IP”) networks, the use of IP networks for multimedia call transmission and call signaling, the increasing computing and storage capacity of portable intelligent devices (e.g., at present these devices are typically handheld PDAs, but soon such computing and storage capacity will be available in smaller devices, such as watches, jewelry, or implants), and the increasing ability of a PID to communicate with other devices using wireless technology, such as infrared data transmissions, a wireless Local Area Network (“LAN”), wireless Wide Area Network (“WAN”) and/or a wireless Internet service provider (“WISP”).